{"id":166651,"date":"2023-06-29T17:26:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T22:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/how-theoretical-zero-point-energy-draws-limitless-fuel-from-the-vacuum-of-space"},"modified":"2023-06-29T17:26:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T22:26:52","slug":"how-theoretical-zero-point-energy-draws-limitless-fuel-from-the-vacuum-of-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/how-theoretical-zero-point-energy-draws-limitless-fuel-from-the-vacuum-of-space","title":{"rendered":"How Theoretical Zero-Point Energy Draws Limitless Fuel From The Vacuum Of Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Rh898Yr5YZ8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As sci-fi fans will attest, scenes of the distant future aren\u2019t too difficult to imagine. We\u2019ve got fleets of intergalactic ships exploring the inscrutable vastness of space. We\u2019ve got legions of hardy settlers terraforming strange, new worlds. There\u2019s a great galactic chain of humanity forged through will, knowledge, and intellect stretching across the Milky Way and beyond. At least, that\u2019s one version. Some would describe a brutal, militaristic future for humanity, or one of disembodied consciousnesses and networks of planet-spanning artificial intelligence. But in each version, there\u2019s one crucial element that humanity can\u2019t do without: energy.<\/p>\n<p>Energy is such a fundamental, critical component to civilization \u2014 off-world or not \u2014 that Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grunge.com\/756205\/the-scale-used-to-classify-alien-civilizations-explained\/\" target=\"_blank\">labeled spacefaring civilizations<\/a> based on how much energy they consumed; the higher the ranking, the more advanced, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/kardashev-scale\" target=\"_blank\"><a href=\"http:\/\/Space.com\">Space.com<\/a><\/a> explains. We\u2019re talking far, far beyond crude fuel like oil and coal. Earth isn\u2019t even a Type I civilization because we haven\u2019t harnessed all the energy available on our own planet. By contrast, a Type II civilization would be able to build an energy-harnessing structure like a Dyson sphere around its own sun, as described in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/space\/deep-space\/a11098\/dyson-sphere\/\" target=\"_blank\">Popular Mechanics<\/a>. After all, all those intergalactic ships, stations, settlements, etc., need power from somewhere, same as they need materials.<\/p>\n<p>So what if there was some nigh-infinite, nigh-magical source of energy that permeated the entire universe? What if it could be tapped at will, from anywhere at any time? That\u2019s zero-point energy in a nutshell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As sci-fi fans will attest, scenes of the distant future aren\u2019t too difficult to imagine. We\u2019ve got fleets of intergalactic ships exploring the inscrutable vastness of space. We\u2019ve got legions of hardy settlers terraforming strange, new worlds. There\u2019s a great galactic chain of humanity forged through will, knowledge, and intellect stretching across the Milky Way [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1507,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental","category-robotics-ai","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}